How to Market on Photo Sharing Sites

Digital cameras are everywhere from pocket sized point and shoots and cell phone cameras to popular digital SLRs that appear to be around the chest of every tourist. Unfortunately all of these pictures take up a great deal of digital space that the average amateur photographer cannot accommodate. As a result, the photo sharing marketplace has exploded to provide numerous homes for avid photographers to host their stash of family, business and artsy pics. The following sites stand out as serious performers in this socially-driven field:

Flickr: extremely popular and by far the leader in this industry to date.

Picasa: owned by Google, it incorporates functions such as facial recognition and geotagging.

TwitPic: users can post photos and video and immediately share them via Twitter. It can be used independently of Twitter, though many of its features make it compatible to use in sync.

Instagram: allows users to apply digital filters to photos and then immediately share them through their social networks. Images produced here are confined to a square shape reminiscent of Kodak Instamatic photos, which gives them a vintage look.

Associated Marketing Strategy Pictures are optimized much the same way as videos: carefully craft a title, a description and keyword tag that best represents the image and piques the interests of your target viewer. But the question that I often consider is, “what is the best way to make photos generate business?” My first recommendation is to use pictures to show your interest in your field. For example, if you sell cars you could benefit from posting your photos from the most recent car show you went to, including a note that you will soon have the cars available on your lot. It is useful to provide a link to your own website so that viewers can easily investigate you when their interest is piqued. Showing that you are interested and active in your industry implies a level of knowledge that many viewers may find comforting.

You can also download our PDF called “Do it Yourself Social Media Marketing” created August 2012. Please note, any changes or updates that have occured on our website since then may not be reflected in this document.